Slate's John Dickerson Just Kicked Me in the Heart

So, I am in the habit of listening to political podcasts on my errands around town.  It keeps me kind of informed without me having to read the news, and it ensures that I won't accidentally burst into Lady GaGa on the bus.  So, I was listening to last week's edition of Slate's Political Gabfest.  John Dickerson, chief political correspondent at Slate, is one of my favorite political analysts, because he usually does a good job of keeping things in perspective.

On last week's edition, the panel was discussing potential Republican presidential candidates, including New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who has since said he wasn't going to run.  A lot of the speculation about Christie revolved around his weight, which seemed to me an extremely stupid thing for pundits to discuss, as we've had plenty of fat presidents, and they all seemed to do just fine (and not a single one of them died in office, fyi).

John Dickerson commented that probably one of the things that stood in Christie's way was  that he had to get his "body" back and forth from New Jersey to Iowa, New Hampshire, and potentially Florida.  It was a weird way of phrasing it, since nobody every laments that Michele Bachmann or Rick Perry has to get his/her "body" around the country.  But then Dickerson said that Christie was a "big guy" and so such a schedule could have ill effects on Christie's "health."

Let me say this succinctly:  YOU CANNOT JUDGE HEALTH BASED ON A PERSON'S BODY SIZE.  PERIOD.  This is the most ignorant thing you can possibly say and it's disgusting that you would consider Christie's body size as an indicator of his fitness to run for president.  When Christie declined to run for president last week, it was not because he was fat.  If that issue came up in his political calculus, it's likely because he didn't want his body ridiculed, dissected, and otherwise discussed by members of the political elite who are, allegedly, journalists.

I shudder to think what would happen if it were a fat woman running for office instead of a man.  We already have seen what happened to Hillary Clinton when she ran for president and now that she's serving as Secretary of State (she often looks "haggard"), and both Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor's bodies have come under scrutiny during their respective Supreme Court nomination hearings.  But I can't think of a fat woman who has actually run for national office.  This really makes me angry because lesser versions of this exist in many professions, including my own.  And it made me doubly sad because the commentary came from someone I genuinely respect, and who usually really takes the time not to engage in this type of ridiculous personal attack in his political analysis.

I'm writing an email to Dickerson, and would encourage you to do the same.  I think it would be awesome of one of Slate's podcasts, either the political one or the DoubleX feminist gabfest, would cover this issue and maybe talk about why our news media is obsessed with judging people's bodies.  You can reach John Dickerson at slatepolitics@gmail.com, or on Twitter @jdickerson.